In a series of events that has left many of us shocked, frequent convention vendor Lemonbrat has filed a lawsuit against their former financial manager Corey Wood. The case (2018-CH-14309) was filed back on the 15th of November, though Lemonbrat did not publicly acknowledge Wood was no longer with the company until a Facebook post yesterday:

While we haven’t seen the original filings, according to the Cook County Record Plaintiffs Lemonbrat and Barbara Staples are alleging

…they discovered Wood established separate Square accounts for Lemonbrat and its predecessor that diverted credit card payments that belonging to the plaintiffs to Wood personally. The plaintiffs allege Wood diverted more than $40,000 to himself via his false Square account or accounts and has written more than $15,000 in bogus checks.

If any of this is true, it’s a pretty serious situation. What makes it even more important though is Wood’s prominence in the con running community. Wood is the convention chair for Anime Milwaukee (Wisconsin’s largest anime convention), and owns and operates other events including the upcoming furry convention Aquatifur.

Nerd & Tie reached out to both Wood and Lemonbrat for comment while writing this piece. Wood responded that he and Lemonbrat “…are handling all of this on a civil level and none of the conventions I manage have been or will be affected by these allegations and issues.” We have yet to receive a response from Lemonbrat on the matter. Lemonbrat has opted not to comment.

Update (12/4/18 4:00pm): Anime Milwaukee has announced that Wood has stepped down as Convention Chair.

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Trae Dorn

Trae Dorn has been staffing conventions for over twenty years, and is a co-founder of Wisconsin’s longest running Anime convention No Brand Con. Trae also writes and draws the webcomics UnCONventional and The Chronicles of Crosarth, which leads many to ask when the hell they have time to actually do anything anymore. Trae says they have the time because they “do it all quite poorly.”